Archery bows have been around for a long time and come in many forms. Archery bows essentially started as simple structures that included a string attached to a long shaft and the bending of the shaft produced the energy needed for the string to propel an arrow. Over the years, this simple design has been improved to increase shooting speeds, improve accuracy and to reduce holding forces when the bow and arrow are in the shooting position. The advances in the design have resulted in significant improvements of the once simple archery bow. This even included the introduction of the crossbow that combined the function and features of an archery bow with the shooting style of a long gun. However, even with all of the advancements in this industry, archery bows and crossbows are only configured to hold a single arrow or projectile wherein the user must manually load each arrow or projectile between shots. As a result, even though the bow and arrow have been improved, the archer must reload the bow between each shot, which greatly reduces the ability to quickly shoot multiple arrows. While the skilled archer can quickly pull arrows from his or her quiver between shots, this still takes time and can take a significant amount of time for the less skilled archer. Therefore, there is a need for a crossbow that can hold multiple arrows or projectiles wherein the archer can shoot multiple projectiles quickly without reloading the bow.
The same is true with toy bows. While these toy products have been around for many years and have enjoyed many of the same advancements, toy bows also have the same inherent shortcoming wherein they are only capable of holding a single arrow or projectile.
Yet even further, the layout of a crossbow is such that the flow of multiple projectiles must be controlled to allow for the cocking of the bow string. Yet further, the layout of the crossbow is also such that projectiles not intended to be shot from the crossbow can be loaded into the arrow track and shot from the crossbow. As can be appreciated, this can damage the crossbow and can allow for unintended uses of the device. Thus, crossbows present yet additional challenges to allow for the capabilities of supporting multiple projectiles for quick sequential firing.
Accordingly, there is a need for a crossbow that can support more than one projectile and can quickly move the multiple projectiles into a firing position without reloading the crossbow. Further, there is a need to control the flow of the projectiles and to reduce or eliminate the ability to shoot unintended projectiles from the crossbow.
For this application, a crossbow is any crossbow like structure that can shoot a projectile in a way similar to an archery crossbow. This can include, but is not limited to, crossbows using traditional limbs with the bow string merely attached to the ends of the limbs, compound action crossbows that include performance enhancers, and/or any other variation or style known in the archery field or will be known in the field. These bows include toy crossbows that can shoot a projectile similar to that of a real bow referenced above, but that can be used as toys and with different projectiles. The invention of this application could even be used in connection with youth bows intended for older children and which can shoot more traditional arrows. The projectiles can by any projectile configured to be launched by a crossbow and which can vary in view of the use of the bow. Further, the projectiles can be newly designed projectiles that are designed to take advantage of the invention of this application. These projectiles can include, but are not limited to, a traditional archery arrow, hunting arrows, non-lethal arrows, target arrows, arrows with modified ends (such as with suction cups or Velcro), foam projectiles (such as those used in NERF products sold by HASBRO). Arrows are a subset of projectiles and can be any arrow like projectile including, but not limited to, traditional archery arrow, hunting arrows, non-lethal arrows, target arrows, arrows with modified ends (such as with suction cups or Velcro), foam arrows, but which directly engage a bow string. And, variations of these examples provided above. These toy bows have been successful over the years and come in a wide variety of configurations. Essentially, these toy crossbows launch projectiles based on stored energy in a string, air power and/or spring power.